�Tribal sovereignty means that; it's
sovereign. I mean, you're a�you've
been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between
the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities."�George W. Bush, Washington, DC,
Aug. 6, 2004 [Emphasis added] [Source]
[Watch video]
American pretexts for colonialist expansions, military
interventions, or wars, share a peculiar makeup. They are systematic, never in
self-defense, and always have two sides: a true intent (real objective)
and a declared aim (propagandistic objective).
True intent includes expanding the reach of U.S.
corporations, establishing military supremacy to protect what the U.S. call
�national interests,� or encroaching on the wealth and sovereignty of foreign
states. Declared aim includes pretexts. These could be moralizing, legalistic, phony
humanitarian solidarity, bogus human rights issues, �spreading� freedom,
�national security� issues, and so forth.
Since the foundation of the empire-republic, pretexts have
formed the core of American expansionist doctrines. Because it is the product
of contradictory ideological factors, I call this core, Inherent
Contradictory Dualism (ICD). ICD is an ambivalent
mechanism that the United States has been using assiduously as an operative
tool of foreign policy. The praxis of U.S. imperialism, however, is not
dependent on mystified dualism. While dualism applies to conceptual contrast
between two entities as in the philosophical construct: mind and matter, or to
opposing forces as in the theological: good and evil, ICD applies to long
experimented and socially promulgated ideological-material systems. In these
systems, declared objective and true intent of the
imperialist enterprise can co-exist as one force despite their
irreconcilability.
But, declared objective and
true intent present a paradox: (1) on one side, they form the
official basis of U.S. rationales for interventions, and (2) on the other, they
have no relations before, during, or after an intervention. In other words,
while the true intent of the intervention undergoes physical
implementation, U.S. propaganda intensely and solely divulges the declared
objective of the same. For example, from the time that George W. Bush
disparaged the United Nations in September 2002 where he prospected that the
U.S. would take unilateral action against Iraq until the invasion and the fall
of Baghdad [April 9, 2003], the declared objective that we heard ad
nauseam was �to disarm Iraq from its weapons of mass destruction.� Once the
occupation settled in, the original declared objective disappeared,
leaving the space for a new set of declared objectives, while the true
intent kept floating around implicitly.
Still, why do I call this praxis, �inherent,� as if it were
an inborn quality of the American Empire? Of course, nothing is inherent in
nature except physical properties and genetic traits of, respectively, inorganic
and organic matters. But ruses and expedients to implement hegemony have
permeated the fabric of U.S. imperialistic ideology, mentality, culture, and
institutions, to the point of infusion with state and society.
In his essay, An
Explanation of History , author David Maurer hit on the same idea of declared
objective and true intent as when he described the situation in
World War II:
This explanation of World War II as a
war fought for empires and colonies may sound a little strange to most
Americans. Allied war propaganda seldom focused on the idea of empire. When
Britain was at its lowest point after the evacuation from Dunkirk, it needed a
rallying cry to help mobilize the population. They did not say: we must
fight the Germans because they want to conquer an empire like ours. Instead,
they proclaimed: we must fight the Germans because the evil dictator, Adolph
Hitler, hates democracy and wants to conquer the world. [Emphasis added]
When the Americans joined the war, they
adopted this same propaganda strategy. They did not say: we must fight the
Japanese because they sank our fleet in order to clear the way to conquer an
empire in Asia, and we must fight the Germans because they declared war on
us to prevent our weapons from getting to the British. They declared: we
must fight the evil dictators in Germany and Japan because they hate democratic
countries, and they are trying to conquer the world. This was not true,
but it was effective wartime propaganda. It has often been
said that the first casualty in war is truth. [Emphasis added]
An eloquent example of ICD on an ideological level is the
recent speech that Bush delivered at Fort Hood during an Easter service (2005).
Said Bush:
I want to
wish all the fellow citizens and their families a happy Easter," Bush told
reporters after the service. "We prayed for peace, we prayed for
our soldiers and their families. It's an honor to be here at Fort Hood to
celebrate Easter with those who wear the nation's uniform."
[Emphasis added] [Source]
First of all, if world organizations that deal with crimes
against humanity have any decency and are not controlled by Washington, they
should indict Bush for mass murder, put him on trial and sentence him to years
in prison that are equal to the estimate of people he wantonly murdered in Iraq
and in Afghanistan. A mass murderer such as Bush, who declared fascist wars
against the Arab people, and who invaded and occupied two sovereign states
(Afghanistan and Iraq), is the perfect example of ICD. How preposterous
is it that a bigoted man who frothed and still froths for war could �pray
for peace?� Concisely, Bush gave
us a demonstration on how ICD works�he proffered peace while he was thinking
war.
Generally, details of implemented U.S. imperialist policy do
not correspond to the claims invented to justify it. While the U.S. brags about
democracy, it assassinates it; while it jabbers about freedom, it occupies
defenseless countries; and while it talks about free elections in countries it
occupies, it selects candidates (collaborationists) who work to perpetuate its
occupation. Not surprising, but, historically, the documented chasm that
separates between U.S. claims and imperialist reality is so unbridgeable that
it would make any U.S. protestation to the contrary an exercise in absurdity.
The most recent example of ICD appeared (March 28, 2005) in
the voice of U.S. Zionism, The New York Times, under the headline, �U.S. Helped
to Prepare the Way for Kyrgyzstan's Uprising.� Commenting on the turmoil and
potential civil war that the United Sates is fomenting in that central Asian
country, Craig S. Smith gave the following supremacist-racist appraisal:
In addition to the United States,
several European countries�Britain, the Netherlands and Norway among them�have
helped underwrite programs to develop democracy and civil society in this
country. The effort played a crucial role in preparing the ground for the
popular uprising that swept opposition politicians to power. [Source]
What is the declared objective of the United States
to prepare for uprising in Kyrgyzstan?
Smith answered, �To help underwrite programs to develop
democracy and civil society.� This categorically implies that American fascism,
since before manifest destiny, still views foreign people as savages requiring
taming and civilization. But our study of history tells us that Asia and Africa
created great civilizations before Greece and Rome, and that they created civil
societies and their own form of government before any other civilizations on
earth. So why do imperialist U.S. and Europe want to export to them their
�democracy� and �civil� models? It is superfluous to state that the U. S.
pretext for wanting to institute �civil� society models in Kyrgyzstan hides a true
intent: consolidate the American
military presence, bring pro-U.S. forces into power, surround Russia, expand
U.S.-controlled territory surrounding Afghanistan, and to continue the bogus
war on terror (read, colonialism) against predominately Muslim states.
In all attributes, the scope of imposing colonialism on
foreign people is no different from the scope of an armed attack against a
jewelry store. Both, colonialism and the store attack have one thing in common:
robbery. By all definitions, robbery is the unlawful and violent
expropriation of wealth owned by others.
But, while colonialism involves the use of state resources to carry out a
robbery, the jewelry store attack uses the resources of one or more individuals
and has a specific scope: the seizure of transferable wealth�money or jewelry.
Because colonialism is essentially a state piracy, it is more complex and its
effects are long lasting: it seizes lands, natural resources, cattle, homes,
established cities, buildings, history, and it imposes loathsome primitive
slavery on the inhabitants.
Whenever we review the history of colonialism, the scene is
immutable: the colonizer always has a pretext to conquer you. For example, when
Hitler occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland under the pretext of taking
back lost territories inhabited by German-speaking people, he was actually
implementing Lebensraum (vital space, read colonialism,) a centerpiece of his
Nazi ideology. And when European Jewish Zionists seized Palestine (with the
crucial intervention of the West) under the pretext that their Austrian,
German, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish ancestors �lived� in ancient
Palestine, they were actually implementing a centerpiece of Zionism.
Among American pretexts for
imperialist expansions, one is worth mentioning: the annexation of California.
How did President James Polk do that? Answer: he fabricated a pretext to go to
war with Mexico of which California was a province. In his masterful book, �No
Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History, [Oxford
University Press 1991],� Richard Maxwell Brown, a sharp American scholar
of U.S. violence described President Polk�s determination to provoke the
Mexican-American war. On page 162, Brown wrote:
President
James K. Polk�s message to Congress on December 2, 1845, in which he laid out
the uncompromising policy toward Mexico whose eventual result was the
Mexican-American War of 1846�48, expressed an attitude of no duty to retreat at
the presidential level. The Polk Administration�s specific order to General
Zachary Taylor to lead his army into disputed territory North of the Rio Grande
and to stay there�no matter what armed opposition might be made to him by the
Mexicans was an order to Taylor to stand his ground and not to retreat, come
what may. Claiming the ground on which Taylor and his men stood, Mexican
soldiers attacked a detachment of Taylor�s forces. This quickly led to an
American Declaration of war on Mexico. Many Americans then�Including
the young Congressman Abraham Lincoln�and some historians later believed that
the Polk policy of insisting on Taylor�s standing his ground along the Rio
Grande, was, given the failure of aggressive but peaceful diplomacy with
Mexico, a policy intended to provoke a war with Mexico for the aim of acquiring
the Mexican domain of California . . . [Emphasis
added]
The U.S. annexation of the former
sovereign kingdom of Hawaii offers another glimpse on the pretext of U.S.
imperialism to impose colonialism. Interestingly, the Department of the Navy offers
a detailed historical
account on the ruses for annexation; but for the
purpose of this article, I m proposing an introduction posted on an Internet
website dedicated to tourism in Hawaii that offers a terse description of the
machination that the United States used to annex the once independent island
nation. Allhawaii-cruise.com informs of the annexation of Hawaii as follows:
In 1887, a group of American and other
white business leaders, backed by an armed militia they had founded, imposed on
the king a new constitution that sharply limited his powers. The so-called
Bayonet Constitution also placed new conditions on the right to vote,
consolidating the influence of wealthy whites. It required that voters have a
yearly income of $600 or own $3,000 in property, a rule that disenfranchised
about three-fourths of the native Hawaiian voters. European and American males
could vote, even if they were not Hawaiian citizens, but Asian immigrants were
excluded.
When Queen Liliuokalani took the throne
in 1891, she attempted to regain some of the power the monarchy and native
Hawaiians had lost. Much loved by her people, Liliuokalani opposed efforts of
the white business community to have Hawaii annexed by the United States,
sharing the overwhelmingly popular view that they were motivated by greed. On
January 17, 1893, after the queen attempted to impose a new constitution,
powerful white leaders occupied the government office building in Honolulu and
overthrew the monarchy. The rebels were helped by the official United States
representative in Hawaii, who ordered troops from a U.S. warship to land in
Honolulu, on the pretext of protecting American lives and property. The rebels proclaimed a provisional
government headed by Sanford B. Dole, the son of an American missionary. [Emphasis added]
The annexation of Hawaii had a
very precise meaning: after conquering a great part of continental North
America, U.S. imperialism began moving westward into the Pacific. One
ramification of that annexation (1893) is what happened 10 decades later. On
November 23, 1993, Clinton, the first U.S. president in the country�s Zionist
phase, signed into law the Congress� Apology Resolution for
the U.S. annexation of Hawaii. The following is the preamble to the resolution:
Whereas, prior to the
arrival of the first Europeans in 1778, the Native Hawaiian people lived in a
highly organized, self-sufficient, subsistent social system based on communal
land tenure with a sophisticated language, culture, and religion;
Whereas, from 1826 until 1893, the United States
recognized the independence of the Kingdom of Hawaii, extended full and
complete diplomatic recognition to the Hawaiian Government, and entered into
treaties and conventions with the Hawaiian monarchs to govern commerce and
navigation . . .
Whereas, on January 14,
1893 . . . the United States Minister assigned to the sovereign and independent
Kingdom of Hawaii conspired with a small group of non-Hawaiian residents of the
Kingdom of Hawaii, including citizens of the United States, to overthrow the
indigenous and lawful Government of Hawaii;
Whereas, soon thereafter, when
informed of the risk of bloodshed with resistance, Queen Liliuokalani issued
the following statement yielding her authority to the United States Government
rather than to the Provisional Government . . . [Emphasis added]
Politically, morally, and
practically, the Apology Resolution is a masterpiece of cosmic deception�its
issuance did not alter the political situation of Hawaii today or reverse its
annexation. By its own dead weight and cynicism, the resolution is the apex of
historical futility, ideological manipulation, and criminal intent. This is for
one fundamental reason: every factor, every feature, and every change that the
U.S. imprinted with violence on the original Hawaiians, their land, and culture
is irreversible. Apologizing for an imperialist annexation while maintaining
the structures that produced it, is a pointless exercise in correcting past
events.
But, the gist of the resolution
and its ideological message go beyond Hawaii. My estimate is that U.S.
imperialism has produced a Machiavellian tool to beautify its history of
colonialism, thus offering a future model of conduct to the next generation of
imperialists, when confronted with false compunctions for crimes committed
against foreign people. In essence, the resolution is delivering a message:
We, the
United States, can invent any pretext to encroach on your country no matter how
distant you are from us. As we encroach, we can kill your father and brothers,
dispossess your people, take your home, convert your schools to prisons,
install military bases, destroy your culture, change your religion, convert you
to slaves to serve us and our economy, destroy your environment, take your
wealth, take your land, and use your females to please our soldiers. But, hey,
cheer up! One hundred years from today, our grandchildren and future Congress
will apologize to the grandchildren of those who, among you, would survive our
conquest!
Yet, while the colonization and annexation of Hawaii began
with a 19th century encroachment, Iraq�s attempted colonization in the 21st
century is abrupt, bloody, and has all the fingerprints of American Modified
and Accepted Hitlerism and fascist Zionism. Having this mind, we
still have to address questions from part 30. These include the pretexts that
Wolfowitz and Cheney fabricated to invade Afghanistan and Iraq: Why did the
U.S. not invade both countries at the same time, and why did it obtain all
those U.N. resolutions on Iraq to sanction its occupation, but it did not
require them for Afghanistan? Interestingly, the ideological key to answer
these questions resides somewhere else: Native Nations issues.
Next: Part 32: From Alexander Hamilton and Iroquois to
George Bush and Iraqis
B.
J. Sabri is an Iraq-American antiwar activist. Email: bjsabri@yahoo.com.